030926 Contract Talks in Trouble For Grocery Stores

San Diego, CA - Come this time next week, San Diego grocery stores might need your help at check stand No. 9. And in produce, the deli, the meat section, frozen foods and delivery.

A three-year-old employment contract between Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons, and the stores' nearly 70,000 unionized employees is to expire Sunday night and negotiations for a new contract are on the rocks.

Unless talks make a dramatic reversal, nearly 10,000 San Diego members of United Food and Commercial Workers Union will go on strike across the county at midnight next Friday. The strike would also affect grocery stores from Santa Barbara to San Ysidro to parts of Nevada.

Talks between representatives of the stores and union have taken place for the last three weeks in Anaheim.

To compensate, local Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons stores have put up signs advertising immediately open positions should current workers strike. At one Vons store in Point Loma, the sign was placed directly in front of sliding glass doors of the main entrance.

The stores have requested unions adopt sweeping changes in a new contract. According to a spokesperson for the union, the stores seek reductions in pension benefits, implementation of monthly premiums for health care, a lower wage system, elimination of additional pay for Sunday and night shifts, and the ability to hire non-union employees.

The unions have balked at all the proposals and negotiations have stalled.

"All of the significant issues remain unresolved at this point," said Stacia Levenfeld, spokesperson for Albertsons, which has 74 stores in San Diego County.

"There's not a lot of progress being made considering the amount of time they have spent together," said Ellen Anreder, spokesperson for the UFCW.

If the union representing grocery store clerks, baggers and meat cutters does call a strike, it would be only the fifth strike since 1947. Previous strikes, which ranged from five to 28 days, won workers sick time and raises in line with inflation.

Administrators of San Diego's Local 135 UFCW chapter, including local President Mickey Kasparian, have taken part in negotiations.

The stores are asking for the concessions to keep expenses in line with declining sales and increased health care costs and competition from non-union stores such as Wal-Mart, officials say.

"These negotiations are different from negotiations in the past," said Sandra Calderon, spokesperson for Vons, a subsidiary of Safeway. "Mainly to reflect the changing competitive environment, we have to negotiate a contract that reflects today's competitive environment."

"When you look at where the grocery industry was even five years ago to today you can see how it's changed: More and more non-union operators are including groceries," she added. "Where they used to sell general merchandise, now they're including groceries in the mix."

Wal-Mart, for example, plans to open 40 Supercenter stores in California by 2005. The stores sell a mix of lower cost groceries and merchandise, and pay employees as little as $10 an hour. In comparison, unionized cashiers make as much as $17.90 an hour.

Anreder with the UFCW said the store-backed proposals "gut" the current contract.

"The members are not asking for more," she said. "They're asking to keep what they have."

While it is in everybody's best interest for the stores to prosper, Anreder said, the stores are asking for too much.

"There is a problem and the employers are seeking to address that problem with a machete," she said. "What is required here is a scalpel."

Whatever contract proposal is on the table when the current contract expires Sunday night will go to union members for ratification. Members will vote Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Approval from two- thirds of voters is needed for the new contract to go into place.

On Wednesday, the UFCW received letters of support and pledges to honor the strike from the teamsters and unions representing bakers, and hotel and restaurant employees.

Despite negotiating for three weeks, neither side is yet ready to give up. They are, however, preparing for what comes next.

"I can't speculate (if talks will break-off), but I can tell you we're trying to work through them and there's still some time between now and then (Sunday)," said Levenfeld with Albertsons. "If it's not resolved, we are prepared for a labor dispute and our stores will be open."

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